Cutting to a fine point

In my last post I discussed what it's like to get a cut script, and the choices you have to make regarding the intention of the cut.  In this post, I'd like to discuss how we get there.



We cut the scripts because they are just too long to perform intact, except as an experiment.  (See the BBC series for uncut versions!) Also there are often limitations on the size of the cast. (There is no way to cast all 41 parts in Richard III, for example, especially since 11 of the dead come back as ghosts so you can't double them!)

This is not our first consideration. The first consideration is what led you to decide to put this show on in the first place.  Why should we watch Hamlet again?  What do you think we need to get out of it? What is the story you want to tell?  You are the storyteller, we are at your feet to learn.  What do you want to teach us?

For example, you could say, Richard III is about what happens to a group that is created to fight another group when the opposing force is vanquished. Peace on earth? No, they turn on themselves and rip apart into factions.  In Much Ado About Nothing, instead of the usual story about the pretty ingenue couple with two sidekick best friends who never marry, we have a story of what happens when it's those friends that fall in love, turning the conventional story on its head.

Some people, like myself, enjoy adaptations-- that is, in codifying that story line, I find it might be easier to explain/tell if I set it in a setting that helps illuminate that story.  (Setting RIII in a gang, setting Much Ado in a modern sitcom-like setting, etc.) But even if you are doing an original practice or a doublet-and-hose, or something close to that, you still need to clarify the story you want to tell.  This will become your through-line as a director.  It will guide you in everything from discussions with designers to casting. (I'd love to see a Beatrice and Benedict who aren't pretty, but are the "fat" or "geeky" best friends we know from TV shows! It would help us to see this is an inverted story.)

And the story we want to tell is where we start with the cutting.  For example, we might decide that the story of Hamlet we want to tell is a very personal, intimate story of how these people are hurting each other (rather than say, a story of a royal family in political intrigue)-- so that will help us decide if we want to keep Fortinbras (the external political threat). Or we might realize Polonius' arc is about appearing to be fair but really being scheming-- so we need the Polonius/Reynaldo scene to tell that part of the story.

I've gotten a little ahead of myself there, because once you have decided what the main story is you want to tell, you need to decide what the story is for each character.  Gertrude is a woman who is desperate to keep up a facade until she realizes it's all rotten inside, and crumbling down around her.  Ophelia is a girl who will follow her love even till it destroys her.  (I'm not trying to make definitive statements about these plays, but rather show you what your definitive statement will look like.)

Whatever you decide, then look at their scenes as a series of pivotal moments in this story. Gertrude parades her new life in her first scene only to discover that Hamlet is resisting-- her first tiny moment of having it all come apart, her first clue that the darkness will find its way out from where she's hidden it behind her smiles. Etc., etc.

Having settled on the story arc and the character arcs, look at the scenes themselves.  Which part of your story are they?  Remember the old Victorian chapter headings? "Chapter 1, In Which..." I like to do a "In Which..." for each scene.  It helps me clarify what the point is in showing the scene.

Scene 1, in which Richard takes us into his confidence and we meet some future victims
Scene 2, in which Richard secures an engagement to Anne
Scene 3, in which we meet Richard's family who falsely swear to stop fighting
etc.

(You can also do a series of "In Which's" for each character from their point of view: "Gertrude's Scene 1, in which she...")

Another thing to look at is the way each scene moves.  For example, in Act 1 Sc 2 of Richard III, Richard seduces Anne.  He does this in a series of steps-- he lets her expend herself in a monologue, he gets her all confused with banter, he mesmerizes her with a speech in which he reminds her of what her family owes his, and then steps back and lets her make the decision herself.  This is also important to the cut, because each of those things needs to happen for the scene to work. So I can slice and dice, but I need to maintain these elements in some form.

So now I have my whole story arc, my character arcs, the In Which's for the scenes and possibly the characters, and the scene arcs.  Now I can start cutting.

I can chose to cut whole characters (many Hamlet's ditch the Fortinbras threat, for example) or composite them (as I did for Richard's murderers, making all his henchmen into the same two guys-- causing me to move the scene where they are introduced by name up from towards the end to towards the beginning).  I can choose to cut out whole scenes ("in which" something useless to my story happens, perhaps a kitchen subplot).  And I can thin and prune, now that I know what lines are important to keep (he needs to mention x but he doesn't have to repeat it seven times).

Obviously, those decisions can be impacted in a major way by the practicalities of how long you want the show to run and how big of a cast you can afford. I once cut Lear to an hour for six actors and had to butcher it pretty bad. But in normal practice I can usually focus on the artistic, interpretive side of cutting and end up with a cast of "the usual size" and a show that runs about two or two and a half hours.

A lot of times I go through and find the exact line where something happens ("Your sister's drowned, Laertes,") and highlight it.  I know what the key lines are because they are integral to one of the aforementioned arcs. You can't reduce the scene to these key lines usually, but you can start with them as your building block and keep adding back in surrounding lines until you get a scene that flows but is anchored on your key lines.

So when I'm asked to do a cutting, these are the questions I ask the director. If they can't give it to me or want to leave it to me, I do all this work myself, as I see it. Otherwise I hope that the director can tell me what story he or she wants to tell, and all the other information, so that I can start digging that story out of the script. Was it Michelangelo who said that "the statue is in the marble, I just cut away all the parts that aren't the statue"?  Describe your statue and I will find it in the marble.